]]>Interested in Becoming Your Best? Follow This Formulahttp://trainatadapt.com/index.php/2017/10/27/interested-in-becoming-your-best-follow-this-formula/
Fri, 27 Oct 2017 17:11:31 +0000http://trainatadapt.com/?p=860What are the characteristics of top achieving athletes? Is there a formula for their success that you can replicate? At ADAPT, the athletes who improve the most in our performance testing and move the quickest through strength training progressions follow a 5-word maxim:

GIVE YOUR BEST EFFORT CONSISTENTLY

It is a simple formula that yields fantastic results. But adhering to this simple maxim is not easy. Let’s look a little closer at how these 5 words come together to form the ultimate mantra to maximize your performance.

GIVE

Becoming your best requires sacrifice which makes “give” an appropriate term. Establishing a mindset that recognizes this necessary sacrifice at the outset makes “give” the ideal first word of this maxim.

YOUR BEST

The next part of the formula asks for “your best” and not “the best” for a reason. Using your own performance potential as a measuring stick rather than comparing yourself to others ensures that you stay focused on what you can control and improve.

EFFORT

Exerting effort demonstrates a connection to the task at hand. Effort is given when athletes care about a result and understand that industriousness is the best way to achieve that positive outcome.

CONSISTENTLY

Many athletes can give their best effort once in a while, but only the truly exceptional do this consistently to build on their progress and achieve their performance goals. Ultimately, the focus and discipline required to repeated give high effort makes being consistent the toughest part of this maxim.

The next time you wonder how to achieve success in the gym, the classroom, or any sports arena, just remember this 5-word maxim. Coaches at ADAPT are committed to helping you give your best effort every session so you achieve your training goals. This consistent effort is yet another way that ADAPT builds better athletes.

]]>Should You Early Specialize?: Winning the Battle vs. Winning the Warhttp://trainatadapt.com/index.php/2017/01/23/452/
Mon, 23 Jan 2017 20:31:07 +0000http://trainatadapt.com/?p=452Would you rather win your Little League Championship or play Major League Baseball? It is very difficult to do both. Since 1947, only 23 players who played in the Little League World Series have also played in the MLB.[1] Would you rather win the battle or win the war?

Athletes and parents who participate in youth sports have likely encountered the term “early specialization”. Early specialization involves focusing on just one sport before an athlete has reached full physical maturity and typically includes multiple competitive seasons for many months throughout the year with limited rest. With the exception of a select few sports (women’s gymnastics, for example), early specialization increases the risk of injury and dropout rate and decreases an athlete’s overall performance and enjoyment.

Despite these well-documented negative consequences, there is still confusion about whether young athletes should specialize early. Among many other factors, the misinterpretation of research on skill development (looking at you, 10,000 Hour Rule) and the survivorship bias of athletes who specialized early but still reached the professional ranks (“but Tiger Woods did it…”) has led to the belief that early specialization is the best way to develop skills and achieve greatness in a particular sport or activity.

Ultimately, however, the potential short-term benefits of specializing early are not worth the long-term physical and mental damages.

As maligned as the term early specialization has become, it is only by combining “early” training programs that are too “specialized” that young athletes can experience harmful consequences. For the majority of sports, early specialization is simply a case of doing the right thing but at the wrong time. Appropriate “early” training habits and “specializing” once an athlete is ready are both important components of optimal long-term athletic development.

Early exposure to training is important for developing the fundamental athletic skills (also known as physical literacy) that provide the foundation for more advanced sport skills in the future. Exposing youth athletes to a wide variety of sports and activities is known as early diversification.

Specialization is required at the highest levels of sports. This is the reason why there are very few athletes who play multiple collegiate or professional sports. There is a need to specialize once athletes reach such a high level of competition.

The optimal long-term athletic development program can help both young athletes looking for “early” development of physical literacy and seasoned high school competitors who are ready to “specialize” in one sport to prepare for higher level competition. At ADAPT, we understand this distinction, and it is part of the way we are building better athletes.

Our next post will further explore the concept of early diversification.

[1] O’Sullivan, John. Changing the Game Project. New York: Morgan James Publishing, 2014.

When ADAPT coaches review the components of our training system with athletes and parents, we inevitably field many questions about our approach to “strength training” and “weight training”. While it may seem like we are nitpicking, there is an important distinction between working on strength and working with weights.

Strength is an athletic quality.

Not only is having adequate levels of strength critical for increased sports performance and decreased risk of injury, but improving strength is also one of the primary reason athletes come to train with ADAPT. We spend more time in each session on strength training than on any other component of our system. “Strength training” is about using the appropriate exercises to produce greater force and demonstrating this force production in multiple positions and at multiple angles.

Weights are simply implements or tools.

Our training space features kettlebells ranging from 13 to 106 pounds, dumbbells ranging from 5 to 100 pounds, and barbell plates ranging from 0.25 to 45 pounds. You might assume that an athlete immediately grabs the heaviest kettlebell he or she can hold and starts “weight training” on the first day of training. With ADAPT’s progressive strength training programs, however, we start every athlete with bodyweight progressions before an individual earns a weighted vest, kettlebells and dumbbells, and finally barbells.

To put it bluntly, “weight training” is training with weights. The goal of “weight training” is to lift more weight. In pursuit of this goal, you might get stronger but you might not. Should you leave developing this critical component of athleticism to chance?

A proper strength program ensures that you develop perfect technique to boost your resistance to injury and ultimately gain the most amount of strength possible rather than simply lift more weight. Our progressive strength training system uses weights only once you have earned them and this difference helps ADAPT build better athletes.

Whether you are healthy, injured, or returning from injury, athlete screening and testing provides us with information that can help you reach and maintain full health and improve your performance.

Screening refers to examining how your body moves to check your risk of sustaining an injury. When you go to the doctor for a checkup, you expect him or her to take your temperature and measure your heart rate even if you do not show up with a cold or infection. Doctors use this information check for any red flags with these basic measurements. An injury screen works the same way.

Before you write a check your body is not prepared to cash, we should see how many funds your body has in the bank. After a quick review of the mobility, stability, and alignment of your joints in fundamental movement patterns, we can offer you personalized feedback on what you need to work on in order to stay healthy during strenuous training and competition.

In addition to checking your “movement temperature” with a screen, we can complete your athletic profile by testing your athletic abilities. Performance testing includes tasks like vertical jumps, broad jumps, and timed sprints and change-of-direction patterns. Conducting this testing determines where you are now and what direction you need to go as you venture off on the journey of athletic development mastery.

ADAPT can help you become faster, stronger, and more powerful…but probably not all at once as research indicates. What should we focus on first? It depends on which athletic qualities limit your performance.

Maybe you overpower your opponent for three quarters but feel gassed in the fourth quarter of a football game. Maybe you are the fastest person on your soccer team but keep getting pushed off of the ball by stronger players. Performance testing identifies which of these qualities to focus on to help you continue getting better and allows us to measure changes over time.

Using the results of screening and testing gives you the best chance to stay healthy and improve any rate limiters to your performance. We cannot individualize your training without these baseline measures of your movement quality and capacity. Ultimately, gathering your baseline measures through athlete screening and testing helps ADAPT build better athletes.

]]>What Does It Take to Be a Great Athlete?http://trainatadapt.com/index.php/2016/09/09/what-does-it-take-to-be-a-great-athlete/
Fri, 09 Sep 2016 16:54:25 +0000http://192.249.112.255/~adaptcville/?p=154

September marks the end of summer sporting events like the Olympics and the beginning of the fall sports season. As the hype swirls around the individuals and teams that are competing, we often hear about the greatness of this or that athlete. But what do we really mean by “athlete”?

The dictionary defines athlete as a person who is proficient in sports and other forms of physical exercise. We at ADAPT would argue that this definition is incomplete.

There is a difference between possessing great athletic ability and being a great athlete.

Athletic abilities are the physical qualities that improve sports performance and decrease the risk of injury. We know these as speed, strength, power, quickness, mobility, stability, and so on. Phrases like, “Wow, did you see how high he jumped?” and, “She just did a backflip and landed on 4-inch-wide beam!” praise athletic ability.

But being a great athlete should be more holistic. Athletic ability is certainly a critical part of the puzzle, but mental fortitude, emotional poise, and proper conduct outside of practice and competition are imperative for optimal athletic achievement.

Being the fastest, strongest, and most skilled athlete does not guarantee athletic success. Appropriate personal conduct off the field and an ability to work with teammates and coaches are crucial to achieving athletic goals.

The same is true for your career after sport. Being the smartest person in the room does not guarantee success or happiness. You must be able to work with other people and maintain a lifestyle that balances life outside of your career.

Most athletes who train with ADAPT will not earn Division I scholarships and very, very few will become professional athletes. But by encouraging ADAPT athletes to give maximum effort, maintain a positive attitude and growth mindset, and develop an unrelenting perseverance, we cultivate habits that will serve them well in whatever comes after a competitive athletic career ends.

We want you to improve more than just your athletic ability by training with ADAPT, and our philosophy of holistic development is a fundamental way that we build better athletes.

Spring has sprung! The grass is greener, the weather is warmer, and the snow mountain in the Barracks Road Shopping Center has finally melted. Spring also means it is time to dust off your softball and baseball gloves, lacrosse sticks, soccer cleats, and track spikes. As you head out to the fields and courts this spring, reflect on all of the preparation that went into this season.

How can you get the most out of your hard work this offseason? Don’t stop training!

Here are two reasons to incorporate in-season performance training into your routine:

Reduce your chances of sustaining an injury

The Seattle Sounders team in Major League Soccer studied the habits of its own players to reinforce the importance of in-season and off-season training compliance. They found a high correlation between adherence to in-season and off-season performance training protocols and reducing the incidence of injury.

No one wants his or her season cut short due to injury, and additional research has demonstrated that training in-season can be a key way to decrease the chances of spending a season sidelined.

Maintain preseason fitness levels

You’ve just completed an intensive 8-week training block to prepare you for your upcoming season. You already feel the increased levels of strength and power helping you get to first base quicker, kick the ball farther, and throw the ball faster.

Physical qualities operate in a train-it-or-lose-it fashion. To maintain suppleness, you must do mobility drills. To maintain strength, you must engage in strength training. To maintain an optimal level of conditioning, you must engage in more than sports practices and competition.

Let’s say that now you are going to focus exclusively on baseball for 16 weeks. Without any performance training to supplement your sports practice, where will all of your hard-earned gains in performance be by the end of baseball season? Do you want to stay as quick, strong, and conditioned as you were when you started the season?

At ADAPT, we encourage engaging in performance training at least one time per week in-season. Come speak with us, and we can help you establish a training schedule to retain fitness gains, reduce the chance of injury, and maintain on-field performance without overloading your system. Helping you keep your hard-earned performance upgrades during your season is one of the ways ADAPT is building better athletes.

]]>A Space is Just a Spacehttp://trainatadapt.com/index.php/2016/03/11/a-space-is-just-a-space/
Fri, 11 Mar 2016 20:37:02 +0000http://192.249.112.255/~adaptcville/?p=252When you walked into the old ADAPT training space, your eyes were drawn to the openness of the turf area, the large black weight racks, and the various cardio machines in the back corner of the room. Our vast training area and top-of-the-line equipment helped us provide high quality sessions, but how important is a space to the overall training experience?

As part of a course at Washington and Lee University, I was fortunate enough to spend six weeks learning from a Buddhist monk (I took “real” classes too, I promise). This monk is the resident teacher for a temple that sits in the Shenandoah Valley between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny Mountains. He made the point that while it is easy to get caught up in the magnificence of his temple and the beautiful vistas of its location, ultimately a space is just a space.

Longtime ADAPT trainees will recall that before the space’s doors opened in October 2015, the ADAPT program once lived on athletic fields and in various gymnasiums throughout the Charlottesville area. Armed with only a few cones and a couple hurdles, ADAPT coaches worked tirelessly to help groups of motivated athletes improve speed and strength while boosting resistance to injury. Those months without a true home not only help our staff really appreciate our old space, but that period also served as an important reminder about the most critical part of the ADAPT training experience: the people.

We are fortunate to have worked with hundreds of athletes and parents who are committed to making improvements in sport and life through performance training. Some of the athletes who still train with us today have been part of the ADAPT program since we offered our first pilot sessions in August of 2015. These longtime ADAPT athletes help our coaches share ADAPT’s encouraging yet challenging training environment to positively impact the lives of new athletes each week.

We understand that a space is ultimately just a space. ADAPT’s people, from the hard-working athletes to the committed parents and our caring coaches, are the true nucleus of the program.

]]>The Long-Term Athletic Development Journey: How Do You Move from Point A to Point B?http://trainatadapt.com/index.php/2016/02/26/the-long-term-athletic-development-journey-how-do-you-move-from-point-a-to-point-b/
Fri, 26 Feb 2016 20:30:08 +0000http://192.249.112.255/~adaptcville/?p=245

If you were to embark on a cross-country road trip, what tools would you use to get to your final destination as efficiently as possible while staying in one piece? Let’s examine 3 ways to travel from point A to point B and consider how each relates to your long-term athletic development journey.

Method 1: Using a Compass – The Old School Way

Consider that you decide to hop in the car and drive from New York to Los Angeles using only a compass for direction. As long as the compass is pointing west, you’re making progress, right? You may eventually make it to L.A., but you almost surely did not use the fastest route.

This is similar to athletes who understand that physical preparation training can improve performance in sport but don’t train with a plan or system. If you go to a gym and “lift weights” 2 or 3 times a week, are you becoming a better athlete? Without a plan, how do you know if you are making progress? You may become stronger or faster using this strategy at first, but you cannot expect see sustainable improvements without a plan.

Method 2: Using a Map – Now You’ve Got a Plan

Using a map is a definite upgrade for your cross-country expedition: you can now outline a course to your destination. But a map is designed to be used by anyone going anywhere. Does this map have everything you need for your specific journey? Is there a faster or safer route? If you run into traffic, will you stick to the plan and waste a few hours not making any progress?

You see the same problem with a “cookie cutter” training program. It is always better to train with a plan, but you risk seeing diminishing returns and leaving your progress to chance if the program leaves no room for feedback and is not designed specifically for your needs. It is better to fit the plan to the athlete, not the athlete to the plan.

Method 3: Using a GPS – A Flexible Plan Catered to Your Needs

A GPS is the best tool for your cross-country journey. Plug in a destination, and the GPS will identify your current location, offer several routes to get you to point B, and provide real time course corrections in the case of traffic jams or road closings.

ADAPT’s training system operates just like a GPS for athletes. We use screens and performance tests to establish a baseline so we can outline the best way to reach your athletic goals based on where you are today. If you sustain an injury in competition, we can modify certain exercises so you still make progress. ADAPT’s training system combines coaching feedback and intelligently designed exercise progressions that help you reach point B in the fastest and safest way possible. Plug your athletic goals into ADAPT’s GPS, and we will help you become a better athlete.